Alternate Movies

There are two ways by which people handle a sad situation, either people emote all out with loud cries and emotional outbursts or they take it to the heart and bear it all.Masoom is a movie that emotes on the second type.It is a simple story told beautifully with a good screen play.




Dk Malhotra is an architect living happily with his wife indu(shabana)and two children’s pinky(urmila madonkhar) and Minni(Aradhana).His life changes when he gets a telegram from his old school master in nainital. His one night stand with bhavana(supriya pathak)had resulted in a child that he was not aware off. Now that bhavana had died , his master asks him to take his son rahul(Jugal Hansraj)with him. He brings the child to his home and the problems that happen out of this extra member in the house is the story.

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This is one movie which is secretly wished will ends in a tragedy. I think this movie would have added more punch if it ended in some tragic way rather than the usual happy ending.

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The movie is about those untold emotions. Nasrudeen shah and shabana azmi have done a good job. We usually associate beauty with happiness and cheerfulness. But Shekhar kapoor plays with that idea by introducing a cute child and keeping it sad. Unlike the other movie where u get emotional seeing the emotional outburst of the characters here you get emotional, because the character is not doing so.The beauty and the unexpressed emotions of the child forces us to emote, hate the parents and makes us want to take him in our arms and comfort him.



Cast and Credits:
Naseeruddin Shah .... D.K. Malhotra (DK)
Shabana Azmi .... Indu
Tanuja .... Chanda
Jugal Hansraj .... Rahul
Aradhana .... Minni
Saeed Jaffrey .... Suri
Urmila Matondkar .... Pinky
Supriya Pathak .... Bhavana

The movie is directed by shekhar kapur and written by Gulzar.The movie is supposedly an inspiration from the english movie "Man, Woman and child".

Music:
The movie has got some beautiful songs , well its a gulzar R.D.Burman combo."Do Naina Aur Ek Kahani" won many awards. The movie also has the melancholic "Tujhse Naraaz Nahin Zindagi" and two other good songs "Lakdi Ki Kathi" which is a fun children’s song which sounds almost like a rhyme and "Huzur is kadhar". Music is by R.D.Burman and lyrics by gulzar.



Listen to the music here

Awards:
Shekhar kapur recieved India Film Critics Award for Best Film

At FilmFare
Nasrudeen won the 1983 Filmfare Award for Best Actor for his role in Masoom
It also won Best Music director for R.D.Burman. Lyricist for Gulzar(Tujse Naaraj Nahi), best female singer for Aarti Mukherji (Do Naina Ek Kahani).
Even though it was nominated for other categories like best film and direction.It lost them to the worthy winner ardh sathya.In the best actress category shabana azmi was nominated for masoom and 3 other movies. yes she was nominated for 4 movies out the five competing for the category. She was nominated for her roles in Avtaar, Mandi,Masoom and Arth. The other contender was Sridevi for Sadma. shabana won the best actress for her role in Arth.



At the National level
1982 National award for best singer went to Arti Mukherjee ("Do Naina Ek Kahani" - Masoom - Hindi) and P.Susheela ("Aakhulo Aakhunai Poovulo Poovunai" - Megha Sandesham - Telugu).

Trivia:
#)Editing is by arunavikas(gehrayee, rihaee)
#)The "tanha tanha" girl is a child artist in this movie


Links:
Gulzar on R.D.Burman

Another realistic movie that tells the story of how illeterate villagers and women are exploited.The story takes place in a remote village somewhere in karnataka, maharashtra border.This is a village were people are living in the extremes of poverty and above all they follow a culture which is centuries old.To sum it up yet another village, which is a source of the perinneal river of prostitutes flooding bombay.



The village has a god called yellamma.The followers of Yellamma, who are mostly poor, and illiterate, take an vow to dedicate themselves, their spouses, or their children in the service of Goddess Yellamma when they are unable to face the hardships of life.Girls are married to the god and made devadasi's, the feudal lords,priests and other guys use this as a reason to take advantage of young girls as young as 14,15 yrs old.Above this there are the pimps who come from bombay and take advantage of the extreme poverty of these peoples and get the young girls to the brothels.Like the vultures that are always on the lookout for flesh.These human vultures are also always on the lookout for flesh.



Hannumakka(smita patil) is a prostitute and Bachiya(ompuri) is a pimp, they with the school teacher are against the feudal lord Desai(Achyut Potdar).But as usual the fuedal lord uses his money and power to suppress them.Veeru(Nana patekhar) is a pimp from bombay, who takes advantage of the poverty and gets the girls from the villages to bombay.Hannumakka and bachiya plan to save one girl lakshmi from becoming a devadasi , they try to send her to her uncles place in bombay.whether they succeed in there plan , what is tha fate of the girl is the rest of the story.



Good acting by ompuri and smita patil especially ompuri who comes as an impotent pimp.Achyut Potdar who always gets insignificant roles has got a good one in this movie.He comes as fuedal land lord and as usual does a decent job.



The movie is very dry, like the lives and the lands of the people of the village.There is not even a single scene in the movie that gives a glimmer of hope to those peoples.Even the bore well digging machine that comes to the village is not able to find water in the village.

No big plot and story twist,and the failure of the movie to evoke an anger or deep sorrow like Baazar makes it an uninteresting movie.

The credits where shown on stills of prostitutes.It was kind of shocking to see the first frame like that.

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I liked the way the movie ended.The bus starts moving with the close up shot of the red light of the bus.Indicating the future of the girl traveling in it.
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Trivia
Editing is my arunavikas of Rihaee,gehrayee
Acting credits said vikas desai and gopi desai.Is vikas desai the vikas of arunavikas.Is he anyway related to gopi vilas??.



Credits

Lyrics:Prof vasant dev, same guy who wrote for Utsav

Singers:ila arun,devaki pandit

Music: b.v.karanth

photography:"ko hung chiang"

Direction: T.R.Ranga



Links

Yellama
slave girls of yellamma

Bhanwari devi was a saathin* worker who was living in a remote village in rajasthan.This is a village which is in a completely different world.A world where child marriage still happens, where the age old code of caste system is followed, where a man can have his way, where questioning and reasoning are a SIN.

Bhanwari was a lower caste kunwaran(potter women) who was educating the women folks and was fighting against child marriages. She earned the ire of the upper caste gujjars, who were not able to digest the protests of a lower caste women. They wanted to teach her a lesson, result she was brutally raped by them in front of her husband in 1992.Her rapists where Ram Sukh Gujjar, Ram Karan Gujjar, Gyarsa Gujjar, Badri Gujjar, and Shravan Sharma.This gang included a priest,a village head and a uncle ,nephew pair.



After the rape bhanwari didn't do the romanticized filmy style suicide or she didn't move out of her village , neither did she bow down and withdraw from fighting against injustice. Her resolve became stronger and she took the matter to the court.

The fight of bhanwari was not an easy one.She had to go through million's of procedures and hurdles even to file a case.First she had to do a medical examination, given the remoteness of a village, you have to travel a bit to the nearest hospital to get a medical examination. Once she went there she found that there is no female staff there and she didn't wanted to be examined by a male staff. For that she had to go to the capital jaipur. she does.That takes a couple of days and because of that it leads to a week medical examination results.

She had to fight wealthy and powerful people who had strong political conneciton.As expected the judgment went against her. All the accused were let Free. It didn't end there. The judge pronounced some of the most shocking remarks ever heard in a judicial statement.

Bhanwari Devi was a Dalit and so, her rapists — upper caste men — could not have possibly raped her.

Talking on the fact that she was raped before her husband the judge said

It isn’t possible in Indian culture that a man who has taken a vow to protect his wife, in front of the holy fire, just stands and watches his wife being raped, when only two men almost twice his age are holding him.’ The judgment also states that it is highly improbable that an uncle and his nephews would commit rape together. The presence of one Brahmin amongst those accused leads the judge to observe that gangs in rural areas are not usually multi-caste and so the accused could not have acted together.

The judgment came as a shocker to many peoples and It united all the women's organization to fight for her case. The case was taken up by many women's organization ,concerned feminist lawyers and the National Commission for Women.

But Bhanwari was determined to fight further and get justice. She said that she had nothing to be ashamed of and that the men should be ashamed due to what they had done. Her fighting spirit inspired fellow saathins and women's groups countrywide. In the months that followed they launched a concerted campaign for justice for Bhanwari. On December 1993, the High Court said, "it is a case of gang-rape which was committed out of vengeance". As part of this campaign, the groups had filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India, under the name 'Vishaka', asking the court to give certain directions regarding the sexual harassment that women face at the workplace. The result is the Supreme Court judgement, which came on 13th August 1997, and gave the Vishaka guidelines.more

This case has far reaching implications because it has also given birth to a writ in the supreme Court seeking to enforce women's right to an environment free from sexual violence in the workplace, and which emphasizes women workers' vulnerability as agents of change. In particular, where the government employs women in hostile and traditional communities, the absence of a safety net leads to greater risks of sexual violence as was Bhanwari's experience when her work against child marriage resulted in her gang rape. Rather than acknowledge the occupational hazard and assume responsibility, the state left Bhanwari alone to battle out her case in a trial court, against the upper caste offenders whose clout and power was unequivocal in her community.more

Her rapists offered her compensation to withdraw the case. Her reply to them: "Tell our village elders you raped me, restore my dignity." Her entire family withdrew support because they felt she should have compromised and withdrawn the case. Her constant refrain has been "mujhe nyay chahiye"(I want justice).

Bhanwari was not able to get her rapist punished. But her fight has resulted in a law for sexual harassment against women all over india and she has become a source of inspiration for lot of rape victims. And she fought against her rapist all along, living in the same village with her head held high.

I think her husband has to be appreciate immensely for standing besides her all through out the issue. Given the indian social setup, he must have gone through a lot of hardship. Change comes with lot of hardship and pain. And mostly it is people who walk in the front who have to bear the pain, so that those who follow them can lead a painless life.BHanwari deci is one such women who symbolizes the change. A front runner, she might have lost her case but her efforts bore fruit in another way as the Work place harassment law.

Links

Blogger annie meets bhanwari devi

govt help to bhanwari

amnesty mention's devi

mail support

Neerja Bhanot memorial Award

It is still happening

more

*Saathin(friend) is a women’s development programme run by the govt of Rajasthan.

After a long time i saw a movie that shook me completely. I was wondering what happened to those new wave cinema directors, where are the nihlani's who took movies like Aakrosh and ardh sathya that made you protest against the prevailing judicial systems. Atlast i found one movie which gave the same feeling that i had after watching Aakrosh or Ardh sathya. It is Bawander. Wait iam not saying that the director is that great. Director Jagmohan's biggest contribution to the movie is choosing the story.His directorial history will make you think that he is the last person in the world,who can direct a movie like this.But he has.

Bawandar is based on the true story of a rajasthani sathin* worker Bhanwari Devi.she was brutally raped by the higher caste gujjar in 1992.Her fight for justice have been going on since then.The movie is about that high profile case and the incident behind it.



The movie is set in a remote village of dhabri in rajasthan.It is a different world. A world, very far away from us.A world where child marriage still happens, where the age old code of caste system is followed, where a man can have his way, where questioning and reasoning are a SIN.

Nandhitha Das plays the role of Bhanwari devi renamed as Saanvri in the movie and raghuveer yadav plays her husband Sohan.Shobha Devi(Deepthi naval) is a fellow saathin worker.




The movie starts with the marriage of savnri.Savnri is a small girl child sleeping in the cot.They wake her up for her marriage. A child marriage is conducted. The movie moves on to present day and a foreign reporter Amy(Laila Rouass) comes to that remote village to cover sanvri's story.



Sanvari tells her story.She get into the saathin and creates a stir among the upper caste gujjar's for talking against child marriage and fighting for women rights. Result she gets raped by the big guys of the village, that to in front of her husband. The rape doesn't stop there, she again gets raped, this time judicially.



The movie is not about acting or film making. The great thing about it is its story and kudos to the director for bringing to life the story of a rural heroine and making people think about our judicial system.



The director saathin organizer deepthi navel has to suffer from male dominated society. And every issue like this is exploited by the politicians/NGO's etc.Her son welcomes her and speaks in english.

Jagmohan had faltered in lot of places but the story carries the movie. He portraits a black and white picture of the story.where every body other than bhanwari,sohan and shobana devi(deepthi naval) are bad and every body other than sohan and shobana are trying to take advantage of her .Ironically some people think jagmohan he himself took advantage of bhanwari's story.The journalist friend Ravi(Rahul Khanna) is a totally unnecessary character. I don't have a clue what is the significance of this characters and scenes involving him and amy. Similarly Deepthi naval's problems with her husband, the starting scenes of banwari's childhood marriage and then moving to a different time and flashbacks were all totally unnecessary, he could have given a simple straight narration of the story.



The movie is well supported by the cast.Apart from the main actors it also includes

Gulshan Grover .... Advocate Pratap Chauhan
Govind Namdeo .... Dhanraj Meena (MLA)
Ishrat Ali .... Purnia Gujjar (sarpanch)
Yashpal Sharma .... Sarju
Lalit Tiwari .... Tej Karan
Anupam Shyam .... Mangal Panda (pandit)
Ashok Banthia
Shri Vallabh Vyas (as Shrivallabh Vyas)
Ravi Jhankal .... Police Inspector


Music is by Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt.The songs were good.Here the songs here

The movie is written,directed and edited by jagmohan mudra.

Trivia:
#)Jagmohan Mundhra is coming up with a new film "Provoked" starring Aishwarya Rai.And it is the true story of a London-based Indian housewife Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a lady who killed her husband, cause she was not able to tolerate his physical abuse for years.she brought about a change in the English law after she was convicted.

#)Jagmohan mudra is a IIT alumni (BTech EE '68).

Links

My post on Bhanwari Devi.

nandita interview on bhawandar
another one
interview with jagmohan
Dig at Jagmohan
Long wait for justice
more links on bawandar

*Sathin(friend) is a women’s development programme run by the govt of Rajasthan.

What is the worth of a human life?.This is a question that has been asked so many times in so many movies.Saeed Akhtar Mirza asks the same question in his own way in this movie.Whether its the thousand's who died in hiroshima or a dead man in the local neighborhood, what is the worth of those lives?.The government protects even the smallest of its properties, but how well does it protects its citizens??.That's another question the movie throws at us.

The movie starts with lines "...For Safdar Hashmi".The movie is about a small time thief and goonda, Salim Pasha,who lives with his parents and sister in bombay.His neighborhood is one of those shady neighborhood were crime and illegal activities are accepted professions.Actual it is not an illegal activity it is just another dhandha(buisness).You don't look up at a guy, who leads a decent life.You look up at the Don, the big guy, who makes the most out of the illegal business.



Salim being a muslim, has come to know that nobody will trust him and nobody will give him a job because of his religion.So he does his own job, which is steeling and extortion.The movie takes us into his life, his happiness, his views and his background.Even though he is far away from us in terms of his involvement with illegal activities and life style.He is one of us, when it comes to family and his dreamz to live a happy life, to marry off his sweet sister and be a man his father will be proud off.

He is not a close minded and rigid guy.Various incidents that happen around him.Makes him change his mind to quit his unlawful activities and become a law abiding citizen.What happens because of that decision is the rest of the story.



I liked the way the movie was constructed.Getting us into the life of a colorful character the director, makes us see his neighborhood, understand his views, takes us through his transformation and make us attach to his dreamz.And with a beautiful climax he make us question ourselves.



The ending is not a typical one .It an ironical one which forces u to think about everything from a man's worth to the attitude of the society.i thought about the fate of the hero then the lines at the start of the movie which said "...For Safdar Hashmi".I felt heavy.

The movie with its funny and easy going characters might make you feel light and identify it as any other bombay character that u come across in the regular movies.But it is not so, it is a very realistic portrayal of a generation that is taking violence as a career and the society that differentiates people on religion.It is a beautiful study of what goes in the mind of a muslim youth in bombay.Very rarely have movies been made in india, which gives a closer look at the mind of a minority without much of the commercial cinema elements.



Salim's brother in law comes as the clean guy with good morals in midst of all the rowdy elements.He is a proof reader "who corrects other's mistakes" in a urdu newspaper.He correct's salim's mindset also.Talking about salims dead brother he conveys the important message that the easiest thing to do is to become a rowdy and the hardest thing to do is to live with dignity.



The movie takes us back to the days of the tele serial Nukkad. which was also directed by saeed akthar mirza.You can see the same type of setup in this movie.Neighborhood shops, the usual gang that hang around the shops, various
colorful characters etc.



Pavan Malhotra as Salim has given a great performance.Makrand Deshpande and Ashutosh Gowariker come as his buddies Peera & Abdul.The movie won the awards for Best Cinematography(Virendra Saini) and Regional Feature Film at the 1989 National awards.That year it had to compete against Adoor's Mathilukal and Pawan against Mammokka.Mammokka walked away with the best actor award.

Links

Pavan Malhotra interview
Saeed mirza on chaosmag.com

On 1 January 1989, Safdar Hashmi and his comrades in Jana Natya Manch were performing a street play in an industrial township just outside Delhi. Municipal elections were due in Uttar Pradesh, after a gap of more than a decade. The performance was at Jhandapur, where one of the candidates in the election was Mukesh Sharma, a local factory owner-cum-small time goon, close to the then ruling party, the Congress (I). I remember how the bright winter sun lit the brick-paved streets of Jhandapur that Sunday morning.

As Mukesh Sharma's procession arrived where the play was on, Safdar requested Sharma to take another route and come this way later. In response, the actors were attacked with sticks and iron rods. Safdar was singled out, his head bashed in, and left for dead. A factory worker, Ram Bahadur, suspected of giving refuge to leaders of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), was shot dead at point blank range.

Safdar, aged 34, died in hospital the following night. By then hundreds had gathered at the hospital in a spontaneous show of solidarity and protest. Fifteen thousand marched at his funeral on January 3, the largest funeral ever for a theatre artist in Delhi. Protest demonstrations swept the country, and several hundred thousand marched in dozens of cities and towns.

On January 4, less than 48 hours after his death, Moloyashree, Safdar's comrade, companion and wife, led the actors of Jana Natya Manch to the site of the attack and completed the disrupted performance. The play was called 'Halla Bol' ('Attack'), done in support of striking workers. The image of Moloyashree in performance, fist raised in quiet defiance on the spot where Safdar was felled, remains a stirring, inspiring image.more

Safdar's killing unleashed a wave of grief and rage in India. The funeral procession was a nine-mile-long serpent of artists, workers, students -- people from every fragment of a fragmented nation. The play that had been interrupted by his murder was performed on the first anniversary of his death in towns and cities throughout India. Safdar's wife, Moloyashree, was also a member of Jan Natya Manch, Safdar's theater troupe.

"Hashmi's triumph," one journalist wrote after his death, "was that he reached the people. Perhaps that is the one sin the political hoodlum will not forgive in an intellectual".more

from http://www.ramrahman.com/

It is pathetic that our judicial system took 14 years to convict the killers of safdar hashmi.

"The spontaneous protest after the murder led us to form the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), an umbrella organisation of painters, writers, theatre-persons, film-makers who try to reconfigure cultural symbols in an activist manner," .more




Links

http://www.dancewithshadows.com/society/safdar-hashmi-satyendra-dubey.asp
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031105/asp/nation/story_2536096.asp
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-11/26deshpande.cfm

Usually movies that deal with paranormal topics in india are pretty much horror movies. And these movies are mostly inspired from some foreign flicks and indianized with local superstitions and remedies. Yeah and i forgot those horrible horrible makeups. I thought probably "Manichithra thazhu" was the first sane movie that broke away from this line and gave a clean thriller with a scientific approach. And probably the first movie that treated the subject without any of those usual stupid horror movie components. But i was wrong, Gehrayee which came in 1980 is another movie that deals the subject very well. It does not take the scientific line of "Manichithra thazhu" ,but it deals the story in a very sane way without much of the commercial cinema fuss. For a movie that was made in 1980, it is totally a different one.



The movie starts with the statement.
For those who believe no explanation is necessary - for those who don't, no explanation is possible!.

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The movie is set in bangalore.Chenna Bassappa (Sriram lagoo) and his wife saroja(Indrani Mukherjee) are two opposite sides when it comes to beleifs.Chenna Bassappa is a modern man who does not beleive in astrology, ghost and other superstitions that his wife beleives.They have two childrens nandu(Anant Nag) and Uma(Padmini Kolhapure).There happy life is shaken by the sudden change in uma.she starts behaving strangely, she goes into spell at times and behaves like different person.



Chenna Bassapa takes her to a psychiatrist against his wife’s wishes and gives her treatment. All the treatment fail. Then she is taken to magicians and tantrics. Once when Uma is under the spell of the spirit, she tells some secret which causes a rift in the family. Uma's brother is concerned only in curing her and does not care about the means. The movie kind of takes the spirits and ghosts line after that and when u think the movie ended. It starts again with Nandu on a revenge trail. The movie ends with a nice climax.

Even thought the movie kind of becomes a spirit , ghost oriented one in the end. It does not use it as a means to frighten the audience, but to move the story forward. It is more like the ghost that comes in Shakesphere's Hamlet, rather than the one in the usual horror movies.
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The movie is set in bangalore. Not sure why the director choose the background of the story in bangalore and that too a south indian family.Young padmini kohlaphuri is awesome in the movie. Well supported by Anant ang and sriram lagoo. The star cast also includes Amrish Puri & Rita Bhaduri.



Music is by lakshmikanth pyarelal and there is only one song in the movie "Rishte bas rishthe" by kishore kumar. Kind of a sad song with lyrics that has got nothing to do with the movie.



The director is credit as Arunavikas.Short name of the ex husband and wife pair Vikas Desai and Aruna Raje.Their approach of the story is really good.

Links

Aruna raje
Vikas Desai narrates an intresting incident while making gehrayee.

Various time period movies have come and gone in indian cinema.They are usually about the heroics of a king, about a love affair, about the glories of one famous king, saint or a famous character. And most of the movies followed the same style of movie making and reusing the same set of costumes of a particular studio in all the movies.

Utsav on he other hand is a periodic movie that does not follow any of those usual characteristics of a commercial hindi period movie.The story is not about the heroics of kings and kings don't talk pages and pages of dialoges and it is not about a hero or a heroine. It is a window into a time period. A time period when india was flourishing in arts and science.The time period which is usually portrayed in a polluted way by the commercial cinema.Utsav is a movie which breaks from that commercial cinema mold and gives the movie in a well researched background setting. Be it the ornaments that rekha wears or the decorative clothes on the hump of an Ox, everything reveals the amount of research that has gone into the movie.



The story is based on two classical sanskrit plays "charudatta" by Basha A.C.E 300 and "The little clay cart" by sudraka A.C.E 400.Girish karnad has successfully combined the plays and given a story which has love, politics, mild erotica and comedy.Different threads with so many characters enrich the movie and gives a totally different feel than the other period movies.

The movie starts with a stage play style narration.The suthradhar, vatsayan(amjad khan) starts introducing the various characters and tells us about the time period of the story.The character introduction ends with the last characters samasthanak(sashi kapoor) chasing vasatsena(rekha).This type of character introduction felt out of place with the movie.Except for the last 2 characters rest of them where shown dramatically with kajal in there eyes.And intrestingly the suthradhar who says he only starts the play and does not intervene in the story also comes as a character in the story.

The story has various threads,probably the result of combining two sanskrit plays.A theif(shankar nag) who wants to attain fame,a love triangle between the relative of the king samasthanak(sashi kapoor), a prostitute vasanth sena(rekha) and a musician charudutt(shekhar Suman),a rebel(karan kapoor) wanting to over throw the king with the help of another revolutionary(Kulbushan karbhanda),a masuer(Anu kapoor) who is looking for peace.All these threads intertwine at the end and comes to a festive climax on the Vasatotsav(spring festival).

The script is supported by good technicians and actors.Costumes and art Direction by nachiket and jayoo patwardhan.There work in this movie is highly commendable.They make the movie stand apart from the rest of the periodic movies.photography by ashok mehta is also good. Natural lighting adds so much to the movie.The dark alley's lit with the lamps gives us the feeling of how the nights would have been in those days. Music is by lakshmikanth pyarelal.The film has four songs,

Man Kyon Behaka Re Behaka Aadhi Raat - Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar
Mere Man Baaja Mridang Manjira - Aarti Mukherjee, Anuradha Paudwal, Suresh Wadkar
Neelam Pe Nabh Chhaye Pukharaji Janki- Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar
Saanj Dhale Gagan Tale Hum Kitane - Suresh Wadkar

Listen to the songs here

I loved the "saanj Dhale" and "Man kyon".Lakshmikanth pyarelal have done good work on the background also.Anuradha Paudwal got the 1985 filmfare award for Best singer, for the song "Mere Man Baaja Mridang" and lyricist Vasanth dev for "Man kyon behaka".

The story has a number of characters giving us a wide view of the time period. But that also becomes the problem with the movie. The audience are diverted with multitude of threads. And as the stories of these various threads are from old scriptures, you know how the stories are going to end.so no big suspense in them. Shashi kapoor has given a wonderful performance.He and anu kapoor take care of the comedy part in the movie.

The movie has an intresting cast.Rekha

Neena Gupta .... Mandolika
Annu Kapoor .... Masseur
Kunal Kapoor .... Aryak
Shashi Kapoor .... Samsthanak
Amjad Khan .... Vatsyayan
Kulbhushan Kharbanda .... Anonymous revolutionary
Anupam Kher .... Sansthanak's friend
Shankar Nag .... Sajjal
Yunus Parvez .... Masseur's owner
Anuradha Patel .... Aditi
Harish Patel .... Maitrey
Rekha .... Vasantsena
Shekhar Suman .... Charudatta







Other characters were
The movie is also a festival of characters.There are so many people in it.Sanjana kapoor as dasi in few scenes.I first didn't believe it was sanjana kapoor she was in a remote corner with a group of dasi's fanning a tattooer.She just came for a second.Later she came in two more forgettable scenes, she whistles someone to let know that shankar nag has come to their place and in another scene she talks with the cart driver.shankar nag is the thief who is in love with a dasi(neena gupta).Manjunath is the son of charudatta and aditi.






satish kaushik comes as a cart driver.Anupam kher as samasthanak's assistant.
The credits said introducing "manjunath and shekhar suman".



The movie is well directed by girish karnad.Think the only movie that he made in hindi.The movie was produced by sashi kapoor's FilmValas.Sashi kapoor apparently lost lots of money in this movie and after the big loss, he pretty much stopped producing films ,till he took ajooba in 1991.

Much later, when he came to Bangalore in the early Eighties for the shooting of his home production Utsav, he stayed in Windsor Sheraton with the entire crew. He tells you that he wanted to cast Amitabh in the role of Samsthanak in the film. "That was the time he had met with a major accident in Bangalore and I had to finally play the role myself." Having watched him in that fantastic role, you can't imagine anyone else doing it, you tell him. "But I can," he says. "Amitabh has unmatched comic timing." Why didn't he make another film like Utsav, so wonderfully layered and sensuous? "I incurred a loss of about Rs. 1.5 crore on that. I was lucky I could pay off the debts.more"

This movie is really a festival.Watch it.

Links

The Shashi Kapoor Family

Girish Karnad in wikipedia

Girish Karnad

Many would have seen it.If not, just see it.It is a classic and a must see.If u have seen it when u were young see it again.It will be very different now.It was, for me.

I only have superlative words to tell about this movie.If we are talking about indian movies made on womens.This is THE movie.It covers everything from educating a girl child to fighting against tyranny.A movie that asks you not to bear things and asks you to stand up and fight against injustice.

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Set in a remote village in saurashtra.It tells the story of the villagers , mainly that of sonnubhai(smita patil).The men of the village waste there time doing nothing substantial and take great pride in having mistress.They think that they are avoiding trouble by accepting what ever the subeidhar(Nasrudeen shah) of that region says.

There are various small threads focusing on the various bad things being followed in the village. But the main thread is that of sonnubhai's. She falls in the eyes of the subeidhar and he wanting to have her, chases her. She goes into the chilli powder factory which employs the women of the village.

what follows is a confrontation between the group of women’s and the army.
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-----spoiler-------
The movie which starts slowly, building up the story comes to a crashing climax which ends with the women rushing with a war cry holding chilli powder as their weapon. The movie beautifully ends without making it into an usual killing of the villian, that is left to the audience to imagine.
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Ketan mehta has taken the short story of Chunilal Madia and made it into a movie with an universal appeal. It will appeal not only to us indians but to any group of people suffering from tyranny in the world. Even though the movie is set in a village of pre independent india it holds true for today’s situations also.It laughs at the society that does not want to get involved into problems unless and until it affects their family.



The movie talks about the power of unity in many different places, whether it is the woman in the village protesting against there husband or the womens inside the mill unitedly opposing the soldiers or the men folk who are tied to a pole.It does not give all the glory to one person.It glorifies the group, the righteous people of the village who protest against tyranny. Like deepthi naval beating her windows to let the men folk know their wrong doings.supriya pathak rushing with the chilli powder. The village teacher standing up against the subeidhar and village head. The old watchman standing up to protect the women folks. It is about the unity of the week and the oppressed. It is about standing up against injustice and standing up for what you believe is right.



The movie also tells that you need not have to be strong to oppose injustice by various characters. In the whole village of hindu men, who show there manliness by having a mistress. There is only one man who stands up against the army to protect the dignity of his village women, an old muslim watchman abhu mian(Om puri). A physically weak person of a minority community standing up when the majority fail to do so.An example of the fact that a person's strength lies in his mind not in his body.



The factory is sieged by the army and everybody inside the factory are having there own doubts on whether it is right to take the army head on trying to protect the dignity of one woman. Ironically at that moment one of the pregnant females inside the factory delivers a baby. And it is a girl child.



It is not a typical art movie which plays down on the melodrama part. This is a movie which is pretty much main stream, loaded with dramatics, making it a spicier movie as suggested by the title. But it does not do the usual ending of a blood bath, the audiences are made to take action against the tyrant and end the movie .Just beautiful.

It has some great actors in lead roles Smitha patil, nasrudeen and ompuri. Smitha patil is terrific in the movie.The movie also has a lot of familiar faces doing small roles




Raj babbar comes as smita husband
Paresh rawal as a villager
Suresh oberoi as the village head men
Mohan gokhale as village headmans brother
Dina pathak,supriya pathak(daughter of dina pathak and wife of pankaj kapoor), rathna pathak(sister of supriya pathak and wife of nasrudeen )as another villagers who work in the chilli factory



The Movie is written by Shafi Hakim and Ketan Mehta. Music is by rajat dholkia and produced by NDFC.